BUSINESS

Hewlett-Packard has named Meg Whitman, former eBay Inc. CEO and California candidate for governor as its new CEO replacing former chief Lee Apotheker after just 11 months in the position.

Four days after baggage handlers, ground workers and other Qantas employees struck on Tuesday, it will be the turn of the air carrier's engineers to pursue a similar job industrial action in Melbourne on Friday.

Before the iPad, there were netbooks and ultra-mobile PCs. HTC was known back then for mobile phones and it came to a surprise when they launched the HTC Shift back in 2008. The HTC Shift came with a TFT resistive touchscreen and Windows Vista Business. It was a pretty sweet setup with its sliding keyboard. Now it comes back to life with the developer preview Windows 8.

Government leaders of Australia, Britain, Canada, Mexico and other Asian countries have called on all 17 members of the Eurozone to deal with the worsening problems of the Euro currency.

Economic slowdown could force Australian banks to downsize in the coming months, Swiss bank UBS warned on Thursday.

The investment traffic between Australia and its Asian neighbors is lopsided in favor of Aussies. Asian investments in Australia are 1.5 times that of Australian investment in Asia.

Environment Minister Tony Burke has approved the liquefied natural gas project proposed by Chevron in Western Australia’s Pilbara region following a rigorous assessment, he had approved Chevron’s proposed Wheatstone liquefied natural gas project under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, "with strict conditions."

By Kathleen Brooks, Research Director UK EMEA, FOREX.comStocks in Europe have nose-dived today, with most of the major European indices down about 4%.

By Greg PeelThe Dow fell 391 points or 3.5% while the S&P lost 3.2% to 1129 and the Nasdaq dropped 3.3%.

Investors staged a global flight from risk Thursday that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst two-day point drop since November 2008, after a gloomy outlook by the Federal Reserve renewed fears of an economic slowdown.

The 2011 summer of the Japan Swimming has just ended. This summer was busy as usual.

U.S. retail firms prefer to remain conservative about revenue projections for the forthcoming holiday season but see reasonable sales even as shoppers are quite wary about excessive spending due to the prolonged economic downturn.

Apple donated thousands of free iPads to Teach for America.

Social networking sites roll-out their new features to users.

SAB Miller, the world’s second biggest brewer, has been accused of tax dodging. Anti-poverty agency ActionAid Australia has sent a copy of a report detailing the allegations to the Foreign Investment Review Board.

SABMiller’s expected takeover of Foster’s will make Coopers enter its 150th year in 2012 as the largest remaining Australian-owned brewer.

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Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos of Greece told members of Parliament on Thursday that the beleaguered government has decided to adopt more austerity measures, which consisted of reducing pensions and making adjustments in the public sector.

In a bid to protect the global economy from further financial oblivion, the International Monetary Fund pressed Europe's many banks to raise capital to cushion the $405 billion it stands to lose because of the massive euro-debt crisis.

Amazon has launched its new service that allows U.S. based Kindle users to borrow ebooks from 11,000 libraries across America. The service is now in the Beta testing stage in two libraries in Seattle and will eventually be available on other libraries in the U.S.

The International Monetary Fund today made public a Global Financial Stability Report that underscored the need for European commercial banks to augment assets to ensure the confidence and loyalty of creditors and depositors.

Electronic Arts and PlayFish's "The Sim Social", has topped the list of fastest growing FaceBook games with more than 50 million users playing the social game last week. The game attracted 15.5 million new users to take the top spot with 51.5 million total monthly players.

Microsoft will start updating the Mango OS for its Windows Phone in a "week or two" according to a senior staffer.

Dolby Laboratories and Research in Motion have reached an agreement and has agreed to a licensing deal.Under the agreement, RIM maker of BlackBerrys and PlayBooks will pay Dolby licensing fees to use some of Dolby's technologies. In return Dolby has dropped its two patent infringement lawsuits against the manufacturer.

High-end Australian department store David Jones reported its profit after tax dropped 1.5% to $170.8 million and sales fell 4.4% to $2053.1 million. David Jones attributed the decline the strong Aussie dollar and reduced consumer spending due to the global financial meltdown.

Eric Schmidt, Google Inc.'s CEO, stood up to U.S senators Wednesday to defend his company against allegations that it skews search results in favor of its own online services.

The U.S. Federal Reserve announced on Thursday that it unveiled another strategy purportedly to reduce the costs of long-term loans and reinforce the nation’s slumping housing industry.

Foster's Group had expressed high hopes that the takeover of SABMiller of its company will mean Australian beers getting the exposure it deserved from beer aficionados around the world.The Australian beer giant accepted on Wednesday an improved takeover package worth from $10.1 billion from British-based brewer SABMiller.

Nathan Tinkler is the richest young person in Australia below 40 years old, according to BRW Magazine, which makes the annual list. The 35-year-old mining magnate and owner of Newcastle Knights has an estimated fortune of $1.13 billion.